


Bullet-Time

by PreciselyVex (CrashEdit)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 07:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrashEdit/pseuds/PreciselyVex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Discover the moment between the time Jim pulls the trigger and the time the bullet exits his brain...</p><p>My second submission for  Let's Write Sherlock, Challenge #3:<br/>"Songfic! Write a story inspired by music."</p><p>This time out, I picked My Chemical Romance's "Dead!", because I just imagine Jim would dig it...(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhvWRXl_Ex0).</p><p>Lyrics are starred in the body of the fic*</p><p>**No Beta, No Britpick!**</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bullet-Time

 

The moment between the time Jim pulls the trigger and the time the bullet exits his brain, everything slows and expands and the world just…blossoms. A thousand iterations of itself spinning, existing, co-existing all at once and for once, Jim is in awe because this literal bullet-time is oh, so beautiful.

It’s a funny life, thinks Jim. One minute you’re tasting gunmetal in your mouth, and the next you’re transported – still on top of St. Bart’s, yes, but suddenly there’s music, the volume turned up to 11 on a track you never realized you LOVED.SO.MUCH, and the rooftop explodes with activity, crowded now with familiar, smiling faces and yeah, it’s a party. A coming home party for you, Jimmy...

And Sherlock? He’s a million miles away. The roof is a million miles long and Sherlock is waaaaay on the other side and he’s so _small_ now, like an ant -- awww, isn’t he cute? Makes Jim wonder why he spent so much time and effort chasing after such an inconsequential little insect.  He could just step on him now and be done with him for once and for all…

“Wouldn’t it be grand*?” Jim hears a voice in his ear and turns to find a vision in pink, a veiled woman, her soft hand taking his.

“Wouldn’t what be grand?” Jim blinks, and his head is starting to hurt. “Do I know you?”

“I know you…” The Lady in Pink glances at him meaningfully from underneath her veil. “Are you ready to greet your guests?”

Jim nods, linking his arm in hers, and suddenly it’s a receiving queue, and the guests are in a row and he’s no longer walking, no sir, Jim’s gliding, slowly skimming through the crowd with his Lady. She leads the way and she doesn’t stop until she’s reached the very front of the queue – and it starts where Jim started, with Siobhan, which comes as a bit of a surprise to Jim, because he had no idea that his mother was even dead.

“Siobhan,” Jim starts, and knows he should be feeling things, feeling angry because of everything that she did and, more importantly, everything that she didn’t do – and he should at least be curious about where she went when she finally and inevitably left him, but it doesn’t matter, no, not anymore, and it’s weird, but that’s life, isn’t it? “Not exactly Majorca, is it, Mum?”

 “It ain’t exactly what you planned*, Jimmy.” Siobhan says, and Jimmy’s five again, remembering his drawings, drawings of heaven as a seaside Spanish resort town he’d once read about in a magazine. Not once had he imagined it as a hospital rooftop in London. Not once had he drawn the barrel of a gun…

The Lady in Pink nudges him and he dutifully kisses his mother once on the cheek before moving on.

And it’s like he’s a celebrity, really, the way he makes his way through the crowd, shaking hands and smiling, sometimes waving, and he feels like he’s got kaleidoscope eyes, like he’s Lucy in the Sky, but instead of diamonds, it’s bullets, because a lot of these people -- most of these people, if we’re being honest -- are dead _because_ of him, and it’s glorious because they’re actually HAPPY, they’re actually THANKING HIM! Jeff Hope shakes his hand and Connie Prince air kisses him and even that old blind crone is actually crying tears of happiness when she hugs him, still wearing the munitions vest that blew her into a million tiny bits.

It’s enough to make Jim wonder if he’d actually been on the side of the angels all along.

The end of the queue, however, is what really takes Jim’s breath away, and he clings to The Lady in Pink because it’s all so poetic and perfect. Because the person who is last was the beginning of the end for Jim, the person whose pain tasted the sweetest because his pain came first.

“Carl Powers, “says Jim, as if addressing a deity.

Carl is still a child, still wearing his swimsuit, and his hair is still wet, he still smells of chlorine and Jim wants to touch him, wants to feel the moisture on his skin, but he doesn’t. He waits, Jim does, to see what Carl will do.

They stare at one another, and then Carl does the unthinkable.

He laughs – but it’s not a nice laugh. Not a “thank you for killing me, Jim” laugh. No, it’s a mocking laugh, combined with a cruel twist of his lip that reminds Jim of being in school, and then the boy leans in to whisper in Jim’s ear, as if sharing a secret, as if delivering the punchline to the funniest joke ever written:

_“Have you heard the news that you’re dead*?”_

 

 

That’s when everything changes.

The party shifts, the music ebbs away, the color drains from around him and Jim finds himself on trial again, on the stand, and the judge is asking him a question, and he can’t quite comprehend the words…

“What do you think you deserve?” the judge asks, and Jim can’t answer because he doesn’t know.  He stammers and the crowd waits.

“I…don’t know, I don’t remember.” he says, scrambling for favor from the judge. “They were happy, though, did you see them at the party? They were happy they died!”

From the crowd, Kitty Reilly stands up, with a skeptical look on her face. “I don’t know, Jim. Or is it Richard? No, it’s Jim.” Kitty works the crowd all she can, and they’re loving it, enjoying watching her take him down.  “You know, honestly, Jim, no one ever had much nice to say. Off the record, I think they never liked you, anyway*.”

“Molly liked me,” said Jim. “The girl in the morgue. She loved me, all tongue-tied and oh so squeamish*…”

“But YOU never fell in love*, did you?” Molly stood up in the crowd. “I could have liked you, Jim-From-IT, I could’ve even loved you, but you used me. I, for one, hope you get what you deserve*!”

That’s when the crowd surges, eager to take vengeance against the small man with the mutable accent, in the name of a girl with a broken heart. They surround him, and just when it looks like Jim will fall at the hands of the angry mob, he feels the calloused hand of Sebastian Moran around his wrist, leading him away from danger.

“Follow me, boss,” he says, and Jim does.

 

 

Jim’s up on the roof again, but it’s empty now, save for him and Seb.

He crumples onto the concrete as the world around him starts to spin once more. “Basher, bloody hell, what’s happening?”

“It’s okay, Jim.”

“I’m scared.” Jim grips his arm and goes wild-eyed, the color running out of his face.

“It’s okay, boss”

Seb holds him, and rocks him, making soothing noises with his tongue until Jim quiets.

“This whole thing…didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to, Sebby.” Jim sniffles like a child and Sebastian hands him a handkerchief.

“I know.”

Jim blows his nose, and stares off into space. His eyes go steely and he begins to work his jaw, and you can see the moment when he sets it on stubborn. He pushes Seb away with a vicious “Get off me, you cow,” and stands, his mood shifting once more.

He dusts off his knees.

He straightens his jacket.

He pulls on his cuffs.

And then he closes his eyes and breathes…

And the breathing turns into a giggle, small at first, and then bigger.

And then it’s a full-on laugh, loud and barking, and soon Jim’s doubled-over with laughter and he’s losing his breath, and then Seb’s laughing, too, because what else are you going to do when your madman of a boss has lost it?

“Life’s…life is…life’s just a joke, Seb.” Jim says, gasping for air, when the giggles die down.

“Don’t say that, boss.”, he replies. “Life ain’t a joke.”

“If life “ain’t” just a joke,” Jim says, mocking him, giggles surfacing again, “then why are we laughing*?”

And the two of them descend into laughter again, and he hugs Seb tightly, slapping him on the shoulder the way men do. But then Jim feels dizzy again, shockwaves of pain coursing through his body, and he braces himself against the larger man.

“Wouldn’t it be grand, Seb?”

“Wouldn’t what be grand, boss?”

That’s what The Lady in Pink had said – _wouldn’t it be grand?_ – and Jim had thought she was talking about Sherlock, but now he wasn’t sure. He was even less sure when he felt the Beretta 92FS Inox, cold in his pocket, and he stroked it.

“Wouldn’t it be grand…” he repeated, obsessing on the sound of the words. Funny words, rhyming words, apples-and-pairs, falling downstairs…

Seb looked at him sharply. “Boss, you don’t look so good…”

“Wouldn’t it be grand,” his speech began to slur when his fingers seized the gun’s grip. He pulled it out of his pocket. “To take a pistol by the hand…*”

“Jim, no!” But it was too late. He'd already grabbed Sebastian by the collar and held him close, bringing their heads close together, and brought the pistol up to his face.

_“And wouldn’t it be great if we were DEAD!*”_

 

 

The moment between the time Jim pulls the trigger and the time the bullet exits his brain can’t last forever, and when it does end, it’s Sherlock Holmes who watches it shatter the back of Jim’s cranium.

Three minutes and fifty-seven seconds later, Sherlock responds by throwing himself off a building -- however, it’s of little consolation to Jim Moriarty, because, after all, by the time that happens, he is already quite

DEAD!*

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> *****End-Note Extras*****
> 
> \- Obvious, but the music playing during the party on the St. Bart's rooftop is, in fact, "Dead!"
> 
> \- Tip of the hat to "All That Jazz" -- The Lady In Pink is totally a ripoff of the Jessica Lange character.
> 
> \- Tip of another hat to gyzym, because I've basically adopted her take on Jim's background as canon (hence "Siobhan" as his mother). Read it here: ttp://archiveofourown.org/works/619188?view_adult=true
> 
> \- Throughout the fic, references to Jim's mental or physical health (head hurts, inability to process information, memory loss, body's reaction to shockwaves, etc) are shown in the order that they would actually occur if he'd really been shot in the head -- of course, all of this would happen in a split second instead of the length of this fic, but you get what I was going for...  
> Check out my source here for an interesting read: www.kotaku.com/5798102.giz-explains-what-happens-when-you-get-shot-in-the-head
> 
> \- Thanks to imfdb.org for info on the make of Jim's gun!
> 
> \- Yes, Sherlock really did jump off the building 3:57 after Jim shot himself. I'm the loser who actually went and clocked it...
> 
> \- This was supposed to be my more "upbeat" submission for this challenge, and even though there's death and blood and stuff, I do think it's more upbeat. At least, the music's pretty chipper, considering the topic. 
> 
> Cheers, y'all!  
> Can't wait for the next challenge!  
> vex.


End file.
